The Megahit Movies

by Richard Stefanik

  The Hulk had a different problem. It didn’t know what kind of movie it really wanted to be. Instead of being another pure escapist adolescent charmer like Spider-Man, it became a blend of “A Beautiful Mind meets Spider-Man.” To reinforce this approach, the producers even chose to cast Jennifer Connelly (the wife of John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind”) as the love interest in this movie. The audience that came to see an actionadventure comic book hero had to sit through over an hour of psychological analysis and scientific back story before the CGI action began. There was no return audience for this movie. All the merchandising marketing could not bring people back to see the Hulk again.

  Bruce Almighty at $242 million almost made it. It was a well structured movie that had the core factors needed to become a megahit: magic and humor. But they lost some of the family audience with the few risqué moments in the movie, such as Bruce lifting up a woman’s dress. Yet it is definitely a fun movie that many people saw more than once this summer.

  All the critics panned Matrix Reloaded, but the marketing and built-in return audience from The Matrix could not break this film’s momentum. It became the movie that everyone had to see this summer, if for no other reason than to experience the shared disappointment in an uninspired story. Everyone had to see it once, but that experience and word of mouth killed the repeat audience.

  This leaves us with the two undisputed megahit movies of 2003: Pirates of the Caribbean and Finding Nemo. Did these stories stay within the constructs of the standard Hollywood story paradigm or did they, too, break accepted story conventions?

  What is the unique object in Pirates of the Caribbean? It is the Aztec Coin that was stolen by “Bootstrap” Turner. It is possessed by Will and Liz and desired by the antagonist who needs it to be saved from the curse. It is clear who the antagonist is: Barbossa. He is the absolute villain. Barbossa led the mutiny that stole the Black Pearl from Captain Jack Sparrow, killed Will’s father, and tries to kill Liz, Will, and Jack. Who is the protagonist and the love interest? Is Jack the protagonist, or is Will? Or Liz? They all take active roles in the story. Liz is the love interest for Will, Jack, and Norrington, but Will is the love interest for Liz. Will saves Liz’s life, but then Liz saves Will’s life. It could be argued that there are three equal protagonists in this story, Liz, Will, and Jack, because together they kill the antagonist, Barbossa. Liz charges Barbossa, forcing him to point his gun at her and not the other two characters. Jack shoots Barbossa with his pistol while Will cuts his hand and drops the bloodied coins into the Aztec treasure chest, thereby making Barbossa human and enabling him to die from the gunshot wound. Neither Liz, Will, nor Jack could triumph alone. Yet this movie does end happily. Liz and Will have each other, while Captain Jack Sparrow gets back his ship, the Black Pearl, and heads out to the open sea to live the free life of a pirate.

  Is there a unique object in Finding Nemo? Perhaps not, unless it is Nemo. Like E.T., Nemo is the character that the other main characters want to possess. Who is the protagonist? Is it Nemo or Marlin? This is a story with dual protagonists with dual primary objectives. Marlin wants to find Nemo and bring him back home, Nemo wants to escape from the fish tank and go home, while the dentist wants to give Nemo to Darla. Again we have a happy ending, with Nemo returning home with Marlin.

  Both Pirates of the Caribbean and Finding Nemo became megahits because “they gave the audience what they wanted, but in an unexpected way.” The audience wants the protagonist to achieve their desired objective, but in an exciting and unpredictable way. Both movies are filled with fascinating characters that the audience could care about. Both showed characters triumphing over impossible obstacles and withstanding devastating defeats, to eventually achieve the dreams that they desired. Both are filled with plot twists and humor. Both have happy endings, and both left the audiences with an emotionally satisfying experience that caused them to tell friends and relatives to see the movie, and for them to see it again and again. This is why they became megahits during the summer of 2003.

  Genres segment the mass market audience into different groups.

  Genres segment the mass market audience. Besides the mass audience, the audience of all possible ticket buyers, there are different types of audiences. As discussed above, different groups of people will like different kinds of movies. Screenwriters who write within a genre understand this. A genre can be considered as a type of story that connects with only a particular segment of the mass audience. Robert McKee discusses twenty-five different genres in his screenwriting book, Story:

  1. Love Story

  2. Horror

  3. Modern Epic

  4. Western

  5. War Genre

  6. Maturation Plot

  7. Redemption Plot

  8. Punitive Plot

  9. Testing Plot

  10. Education Plot

  11. Disillusionment Plot

  12. Comedy

  13. Crime

  14. Social Drama

  15. Action Adventure

  16. Historical Drama

  17. Biography

  18. Docu-Drama

  19. Mockudrama

  20. Musical

  21. Science Fiction

  22. Sports Genre

  23. Fantasy

  24. Animation

  25. Art

  Different groups of the mass audience can be associated with each of these genres, and genres can be thought of as dividing the totality of all movie viewers into different segments. Each genre structures its stories in ways that meet its audience’s expectations and interests. As Robert McKee says, “To anticipate the anticipations of the audience you must master your genre and its conventions.”

  A book that analyzes the audience expectations for different genres is Alternative Screenwriting: Writing Beyond the Rules by Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush. The genres they analyze in detail are:

  The Western

  The Gangster Film

  The Film Noir

  The Screwball Comedy The Melodrama

  The Situation Comedy The Horror Film

  The Science Fiction Film The War Film

  The Adventure Film The Epic Film

  The Sports Film

  The Biographical Film The Satire Film

  Genres are not only recognized by story gurus, but also by Hollywood agents and producers, who very often will only consider a screenplay within a specific genre. This is exemplified by online query services such as www.ScriptBlaster.com, which divides all screenplays into the a few genres that are common to the Hollywood Industry: Action-Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Family, Horror, Romantic Comedy, Romance, Sci-Fi, and Thriller (Crime, Mystery, and Suspense).

  MovieLink.com, an internet broadband movie distribution company that enables consumers to download digital versions of popular films to watch on their home computers, divides the mass market audience into the following categories: Action, Classics, Comedy, Drama, Family, Romance, Sci-Fi, Thriller, and Western.

  Some Story Consultants, like John Truby, recommend that some writers try to mix two genres together in order to increase their market segments and create a blockbuster movie. Some popular movies do this and become blockbuster films. But there is more to making a megahit movie than just mixing genres.

  The Megahit Movies will focus on the design of stories that can be developed into mass audience commercially successful Hollywood movies: popular movies that can become megahit box-office successes. This is the audience for whom we intend to write our stories: the largest audience possible. The best way to hope to create such a story is to analyze The Megahit Movies; the most popular movies Hollywood has ever produced. We will not study specific genres, but instead, explicate the structure of the emotional subtext that is the foundation of these popular megahit movies.

  Why do members of an audience want to see these movies again and again? When experiencing a movie, an audience sits in a dark room for about two hours. They begin by staring at a blank screen, then experience a series of images and soun
ds that have an emotional impact on them. The story takes the audience to a place that is very different from their ordinary everyday world. This new world could be a futuristic hitech society like that found in the Star Wars movies, the world of Middle-Earth as found in the Lord of the Rings movies, a magical place like the world of Harry Potter and The Grinch, or the world of the turn of the century as found in Titanic. Sometimes it is not the world that is different, but the point of view of the protagonist. In Sixth Sense, Cole Sears sees dead people; in Forrest Gump, Forrest lives his life completely absorbed with what he is doing each moment. There is some form of “magic” in almost all of these movies.

  It is repeat audience viewing that makes a movie a megahit. Members of the audience have to want to go back to see the film again and again. This is accomplished by providing them with a new kind of experience, and one that makes them “feel good” when the movie ends.

  But more than anything else, these films provide the audience with an emotionally satisfying experience.

  How to hook the reader with only one sentence!

  How to hook the reader with one sentence!

  What is the difference between a logline and a high concept?

  Both are one-sentence descriptions of the essence of a story.

  A logline states who the main character of the story is, his primary objective, and what is stopping him from achieving that objective.

  A high concept is an exciting logline whose purpose is to get an agent or producer to read the screenplay. Robert Kosberg, in How to Sell Your Idea to Hollywood, states that “The essence of high concept is that it is both brief and provocative. It piques the imagination and promises that big things are going to happen out of an ordinary situation.” A high concept is not limited to any specific genre, but can be used to promote a comedy, drama, action/ adventure, horror, or fantasy project. It is meant to excite the audience, to tease them into wanting to see more. It is not so much a story design tool as a marketing and selling gimmick.

  A high concept statement of your project is a one-line sentence intended to excite a producer. Your objective is to get him to read your script, or to buy your script, or to take your project up one level higher in the studio. How do you excite a producer or studio executive?

  Studio executives are in the jobs they have because they want to produce movies that make money. When pitching a story idea, you must understand the motivation of the studio executive. You are asking them to put at least $50 million into your movie project plus another $25 million for prints and advertising. To justify that type of expenditure, they are going to have to make back at least two times their investment. This means that your project must gross at least $150 million. You have to persuade the executuve that your story has that kind of box-office potential.

  How do you do that? The easiest way is to tell him that it is very much like another picture that has recently grossed over $150 million but much better! Your project is just like yesterday’s popular movie, but different in a way that will generate more money. Kosberg states, “remember, when you’re pitching these ideas, executives are looking at both how commercial they are and how unique they are. An idea should be like something successful that’s been done before and markedly different at the same time. Alike yet different.”

  Your project will not be commercially viable in the mind of the producer or studio executive unless there is an existing popular movie to which it can be compared. The screenwriter must understand that there are only a very few people in Hollywood that can actually give the “green light” to a studio feature film production. The rest of the development executives are there to listen to pitches and read scripts in the hope of finding a viable commercial project that they can take up to the next level. They will not pitch your project to their boss unless they think he will want to make it. You must excite him, and make him believe that your project has the potential of becoming the next megahit.

  So how do you design a high concept for your story? Start by looking at a list of films that have grossed over $150 million in the last five to ten years. These lists are available from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter or on a web site like www.The-Numbers.com.

  Why only the last five to ten years? Because what the mass audience likes changes. What was popular ten years ago may no longer be popular today. So it is best to look at only those blockbusters made in the last few years. Find a film that you personally enjoyed and that is in some respects similar to your story. It can’t be identical, because then the studio executive will tell you that it has already been done. What you have to do is place the story into a different context. The point is to establish a reference film for the studio executives so that they can visualize your story and imagine its commercial potential.

  Use only successful films! You defeat your objective if you tell the executive that your story is just like a movie that bombed and was pulled out of the theaters after the first weekend. Can you blame a producer for not wanting to put $50 million into that project? If you pitch “Ishtar in Salt Lake City” as the high concept for your movie, it will not get you a deal at a major studio.

  Another way of creating a high concept project is that instead of taking one successful movie and placing it into a different context, link together the titles of two successful movies. Kosberg states, “by merging two contemporary movie titles that are immediately recognizable-X meets Y-you come up with a brand-new brainchild, a high-concept Z.” For example, “The Terminator meets The Men in Black” would be a new high concept, as would “Pretty Woman meets Apollo 13” for some out-of-space fun. You could also try to pitch “Forrest Gump meets Mission Impossible” or “Big Daddy meets Godsford Park” for two “fish-out-of-water” stories.

  Some high concepts use popular books in their statement instead of movies. For example, the movies Batman, Spider-Man and MIB were adaptations of popular comic characters. Jurassic Park, Jaws, and Harry Potter are inherently high concept projects because they were based on popular novels. This establishes a reference for the producer, and gives him confidence that there will be a market for the movie.

  Kosberg believes that, “Science fiction and fantasy score well when combined with comic elements…the studios are looking to make films that have cross-over appeal or that will attract a wide audience margin.” Looking at the list of megahit movies will verify this.

  Audience identification with your protagonist is essential for commercial success. The members of the audience must become emotionally involved with the hero and the love interest in your story and hate the antagonist. This is often accomplished if you make the protagonist an ordinary person thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Put a normal person into a bizarre situation.

  Ultimately, it is not “character studies” that are high concept movies. In our list of megahits, only Forrest Gump could be considered a character study. Kosberg believes that “when it is time for the studio to decide whether they want to buy your idea or not, its plot is going to be more important than character growth. But characters do not sell in the pitch meeting. Premises sell.” It is a well-structured story that can be related to a commercially successful film that will close the deal.

  The DoneDeal website (www.ScriptSales.com) lists the loglines of scripts that have recently been sold to Hollywood producers or production companies. Creative Screenwriting and Script magazines also list the projects that are presently being sold to Hollywood.51

  Below are high concepts and loglines for some spec screenplays developed by RMS Productions Company. Entanglements by Richard Michaels Stefanik & Glen Underwood “Sneakers meets Minority Report”.

  A Sci-Fi Thriller set in 2024 about a man who creates a Quantum Computer that can break any security code in the world, but then is framed for murder by the greedy CEO of his corporation. He tries to prove his innocence and get back his wife, but is relentlessly pursued by Federal Agents and a Crime Syndicate that wants the security code-breaking computer for their own use.

 
Borges in London by Richard Michaels Stefanik

  “The Da Vinci Code meets a Digital Fortress“

  A literary scholar who specializes in the work of Jorge Luis Borges, the magical realism writer, becomes involved in a murder and financial intrigue while researching the life of Borges in the City of London.

  Elixir by Richard Michaels Stefanik

  ”Harry Potter meets Lord of the Rings”

  A sword and sorcerer fantasy set in the time of Elizabethan England, where a group of witches, alchemists, and magicians pursue the “elixir of life,” that potion which can transform a person into whatever they dream to become.

  Mark Twain & The Mysterious Stranger

  by Richard Michaels Stefanik. “Mark Twain meets Satan” Mark Twain, when faced with bankruptcy and the death of his wife and two daughters in the last years of his life, turned to the problem of eternal evil, and wrote The Mysterious Stranger, the story of Angel # 44, a being of supreme intelligence who has no compassion for mankind.

  Double or Nothing by Richard Michaels Stefanik & Michael Herst “Get Shorty in Las Vegas”

  A comedy about a loser who tries to run away from his life by buying a new identity, only to find that the Mob, the FBI, and a widow are now after him because he bought the identity of a mafia hit man that became an FBI informant.

  Monte Carlo by Linda C. Wright

  “Cinderella in Monte Carlo”